John Meyer

Meyer: Great season for US Ski Team portends glory at 2014 Olympics

U.S. Ski Team stars Ted Ligety (giant slalom) and Mikaela Shiffrin (slalom) won World Cup championships this season. Shiffrin, from Eagle-Vail, turned 18 last week. Look for them to shine at the Sochi Olympics next year. (Denis Balibouse, Reuters)

Even without the bombshell news Lindsey Vonn dropped Monday — that she is romantically involved with Tiger Woods after all — we just saw the finish of an incredibly eventful season for the U.S. Ski Team that creates all sorts of fascinating story lines with the Olympics less than a year away.

If Vonn has outgrown her girl-next-door image, teen slalom star Mikaela Shiffrin is perfect to inherit it. Shiffrin is genuine and smart. She comes from a wonderful family, and America is going to love what it sees of them at the Olympics. There's also Kikkan Randall, a delightful cross country racer from Alaska who has a good chance to become the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in her sport.

The biggest skiing star this winter was Ted Ligety. He is humble and gracious, but not afraid to speak his mind.

Then there's Vonn's comeback from a severe knee injury, a story that turned from drama to melodrama with Monday's news. It's going to be an interesting offseason in Olympic snow sports.

Shiffrin already has to be considered the Olympic favorite in slalom, probably the first of many Olympic medals for her. Before Saturday, only one U.S. woman had won a World Cup season slalom title: Tamara McKinney, in 1984. Shiffrin became the second, only three days past her 18th birthday.

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Randall won a world championships gold medal in the cross country team sprint with Jessica Diggins, a first for the U.S. Only one American has won a medal in cross country at the Olympics — Bill Koch (silver), in 1976. If Randall can come through, America will like her a lot.

What Ligety accomplished this season is amazing. It's been a generation since anyone dominated giant slalom on the World Cup the way he did, and winning three gold medals at the world championships was epic. It will be fascinating to see what he does next year because he has a massive target on his back now. Every Olympic medal contender will spend a good bit of the offseason trying to figure out ways to beat him. Ligety knows that, and he will be working hard to stay ahead of every- one else.

That's what has made Vonn so great. Even after she began winning World Cup overall titles, she always knew she had to continue to improve if she wanted to keep winning.

Kikkan Randall will contend for an Olympic ski medal in cross country.

Vonn's love life is none of our business, but judging from the comments I'm seeing and hearing, her image is going to take a massive hit because of her relationship with Woods.

I'm sure she took that into account when she went public with it Monday, and is prepared to live with the con- sequences.

But the narrative of her story going into Sochi just changed radically. Before, she was a sympathetic figure. Could she come back from a devastating knee injury in only 12 months and repeat as Olympic downhill champion? If she hadn't blown out her knee at the world championships, in a crash that may have been because of unsuitable course conditions, she would have been a contender for multiple gold medals in Sochi. But now — by her own admission — the most successful female ski racer in a generation is an underdog.

America loves underdogs, but America may not be so sympathetic to her now.

But here's a feel-good story for you. For years, female ski jumpers fought for inclusion in the Winter Olympics, and the International Olympic Committee dismissed them. These women, who love their sport every bit as much as Vonn loves hers, fought the IOC in court and got shot down there. Then two years ago, the IOC finally decided women's ski jumping deserved to make its Olympic debut in Sochi.

Sarah Hendrickson, an 18-year-old ski jumper from Park City, Utah, won four World Cup events this season and claimed a gold medal at the world championships. She has a chance to make history at the Olympics in a very heartwarming way.

That, and all the uninhibited joy we're sure to see in the kids who compete in free skiing and snowboarding, is a lot more interesting to me than what Vonn sees in Woods.